Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-07-Speech-4-029"
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"en.20060907.4.4-029"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am grateful to all those who have made important contributions to this debate, but first there is a matter to which I should like to draw everyone’s attention, with all the frankness that this Parliament deserves.
At this juncture we must cooperate more, not less, but on a clearly equal footing of course. The European Union proudly insists on this principle. I also agree with Mrs Roure in particular, who mentioned the national parliaments.
You see, ladies and gentlemen, if we succeed in concluding the agreement – the talks are taking place in two parts and we start tomorrow; I cannot say whether an agreement will be reached, but I hope it will – we shall in any case need it to enter into force straight away, even while we wait for certain ratification procedures, which in some countries will take time, as Mr Alvaro pointed out. Since we shall invoke a rule in the treaties that provides for the agreement to enter into force straight away – otherwise it would be totally pointless – it is right that the national parliaments be kept informed from now on, in the same way as we shall be keeping the European Parliament informed, since many of them will be called upon to act once the immediate transitional implementation of the agreement has already begun. It is also a question of cooperation and, as you know, the European Commission agrees with that in principle.
The third and last consideration is: what points need to be worked on in the next few days, say, if not in the coming weeks?
The first point is to persuade the Council – we shall make a start during next month’s Council – to approve the framework decision on personal data protection. This is a commitment that I have made and one that Parliament supported. I am making a further appeal to the Council for certain countries to tone down their reservations when the framework decision issue is discussed again at the next Council of Ministers in the coming weeks, so that a document can finally be put forward that really shows the European Union’s determination to guarantee the protection of people’s personal data.
The second goal to achieve within a very short time is the implementation of what was termed the ‘push’ system by the rapporteur, to whom I am grateful. I can supply some detailed information about this. Some companies providing technical services for the major European airlines have already presented the technical solutions available for implementing the ‘push’ system. Some of them – I can mention just a few: British Airways, Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa, Alitalia and KLM, nearly all of them, in fact – have submitted concrete proposals to the relevant offices of the US Administration. Under the agreements that we had reached with the United States, the ‘push’ system could start operating without any need for changes within just a few weeks. Technically, there is already a proposal on the table and, in some cases, it has also been formalised. This is recent information that I have been given, showing how things are moving precisely in the direction that we all want.
The other point is positive profiling. Mrs Roure has asked for general information about the London meeting: I shall be pleased to provide it to the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs next week, when I shall go into much more detail. Positive profiling is an initiative that was not started today or yesterday, but rather a few months ago. It is an initiative aimed at identifying accelerated border control procedures at airports. There are two elements: firstly, as it is reserved just for international flights, it does not concern data exchange for European internal flights, where we would have insurmountable problems with freedom of movement, the Schengen area, etc. The system covers international flights from the European Union, to the European Union and across the European Union. It is just for passengers who, on a voluntary, individual basis, agree to supply their data, particularly biometric data, and in exchange they benefit from using an automatic identification channel, which will evidently take less time at passport control. This is on an individual and voluntary basis, using biometric data.
Why are we considering such a system? To avoid what has been said about ‘negative profiling’, which is profiling on an ethnic or religious basis. Clearly, we could not accept any system of that kind, whereas we can imagine – since the Council has called for it – that each of us may agree to supply our biometric data to a database that guarantees privacy, in exchange for faster departure procedures. Think about frequent fliers. This is a system that we are examining, and we expect to table a proposal within a few months, perhaps by the end of the year.
To conclude, I shall be pleased to inform the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs about what was said in London regarding procedures to enhance methods for detecting explosives, particularly liquid explosives, as well as on Internet use, positive profiling and everything else.
In some speeches I heard a plainly mistaken interpretation of the Court of Justice ruling, which in fact made the agreement an issue. I heard some Members refer to that ruling as if it were a victory. That ruling rejected the agreement: someone said exactly that.
Ladies and gentlemen, that ruling was a major setback for Community interests; it was a major setback for this Parliament and for the European Commission. That ruling established that the matter is not a Community matter; it is not a matter that can be negotiated by the Commission, so much so that the negotiations are being conducted by the Presidency; it is not a matter to which the privacy directive applies, Mr Cappato – it does not apply, whether we like it or not; yet we have to abide by the ruling even though it was a setback for us all. To be quite frank, we cannot be grateful for a ruling that rejected the agreement. That ruling, as Mr Alvaro said, was a backward step for Community interests.
That is our starting point and we move on from there. Clearly, when we are talking about having to reach an agreement in a hurry, by 30 September, and then negotiating another agreement with the United States by 2007, we need to take the realistic, accurate, pragmatic view expounded just now by Mr Cashman.
The real problem is that, if this agreement does not come about, millions of European citizens will accept lower guarantees of protection for their personal data in order to continue flying to the United States. They will be forced to do so in individual declarations, and Europe will have lost any power to protect them to a suitable degree. The real problem is this: each of us who has tried to do his or her duty cannot even think of challenging the United States.
There is an interpretation handed down by the Court; I personally do not like its interpretation, but it is my duty to abide by it and to enforce it. I must also say quite frankly that, if an agreement is reached, the protection of our citizens’ individual rights will at least not be left just to the discretion of a particular airline: bilateral negotiations between the United States and the individual airlines will reduce protection levels, and certainly not raise them. That is the realistic view that we must accept as a starting point.
The second consideration – again, I agree with Mr Cashman and Mr Coelho – is that our problem is certainly due not to the United States but to the terrorists. The terrorist threat is real: what happened this summer in London did not constitute a half-secret or semi-informal meeting of ministers of internal affairs with the European Commission.
We were informed about what could happen in the United Kingdom – I shall say this later in my information for Parliament – and we were concerned to realise that there was a clear and current threat. Obviously, having seen a major operation by the police and security services in Denmark only a few days ago, we are sure that the danger and threat are real and are hanging over the European Union’s territory.
What do we need? We need more cooperation among ourselves, among the European Union Member States; we need more cooperation among the Union’s institutions. That is why I said in my introduction that Parliament will be kept informed, politically informed, even though institutionally and legally it cannot take part in the decision because of the ‘legal basis’ (and I use inverted commas on purpose). In any case, Parliament will be kept politically informed by the European Commission. We also need stronger cooperation with the United States."@en1
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